[Torg] Psionics & Social

[Travis James Hall]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com 
> [mailto:torg-bounces at justintimeadventures.com] On Behalf Of 
> Jones Jasyn
> 
> With respect to psionics, "all psi is a World Law" is 
> equivalent to an axiom chart with 1 entry. "Tech = 0, and any 
> cosms that are different need World Laws."

I believe Jasyn overstates the case, but the basic principle he puts forward
is correct (and has been on my list of comments to make, just haven't gotten
there yet).

A one-entry axiom chart is effectively meaningless, and isn't worthy of
being called an axiom chart.

But really, if you have a set of World Laws that can be sorted so that the
effects they allow are increasing, that directly corresponds to a
multi-entry axiom chart. Even if the World Laws can't be sorted so, if they
can be nearly sorted so with just a few quirks, they correspond to a
multi-entry axiom chart with a smaller number of World Laws set alongside to
make the adjustments.

I think it is unlikely that we will see a set of psionic World Laws that
wouldn't be better expressed as a axiom chart.


> Psychic powers are not all that common in Torg, don't even
> need to be mentioned in connection with nearly all official
> cosms

Yeah, well, that's just because WEG went out of their way to craft axiom
requirements that restricted psionics to only two cosms. I consider that to
be a poor design decision on their part. If you need to restrict psionics to
those two specific cosms out of what was extant at the time, then you will
likely have to make the decision concerning psionics on a similar basis for
other cosms you add later. Tying psionics to three existing axiom that way
makes it hard to do that and still assign those axioms appropriately.

That is, what happens when you come up with a cosm with Social 21+, Tech 15+
and Spiritual 9+ but, on a similar basis to how it was decided where
psionics should appear in the earlier cosm, psionics should not be
available?

Bad WEG, no biscuit.

Travis Hall